


oh, little runaway

by Iolaire02



Category: Housekeeping (1987)
Genre: Abrupt Ending, Character Study, Disjointed, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-18
Updated: 2021-03-18
Packaged: 2021-03-27 10:08:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30121143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Iolaire02/pseuds/Iolaire02
Summary: "It's not the worst thing, moving around."It’s not the worst thing. But it’s not the best thing, either.





	oh, little runaway

**Author's Note:**

> Ah, yes. The non-existent fandom. The fic that no one will ever see.
> 
> Title is from Runaway by Bon Jovi or Del Shannon. It doesn't really matter which; they both work.

“It’s not the worst thing, moving around.” That’s what she tells Ruthie; it’s what she always tried telling her mother and her sister and her aunts.

It’s not the worst thing. But it’s not the best thing, either.

* * *

The last thing Sylvie ever wants to do is return to Fingerbone - but she is left with no choice.

Once she’s there, she always tries to keep the lights off - it’s harder to see misery and mess when shadows borne from newspaper towers and tin-can pyramids are overtaking the whole place. It’s almost as though the dim light hides the fact that the whole house is overrun with trash: there are stale, week-old crumbs on the kitchen table, and butter smears, too; the sink has dirty dishes in it, and the fridge is often low on food. What remains is bread and butter and jam, and maybe some eggs, but everything else is covered in a thin film of pale green fuzz.

She always keeps the lights off, when she can help it, and she stays out of the house as much as she can, because when she’s outdoors, in the orchard, tiptoeing across the train tracks that cross the lake, or lurking in the darkness it’s hard to remember that she doesn’t want to be there.

She lets the grass and the ferns grow and grow and grow, like she thinks if it grows for long enough it’ll creep all the way up to the house, all the way up the steps and across the porch until it reaches the walls and climbs them, too. She lets it all grow wild partially because she’s never been one for maintenance, and partially because sometimes she thinks that if it grows enough the plants will blanket the house, and one day when she’s coming home it’ll be invisible behind all the green, and she’ll be able to walk right along past it and get on a train and get out of Fingerbone.

And if anyone asks, she’d be able to say, “Oh, I didn’t see it. I couldn’t find that old house,” because that’s better than admitting that she wants, more than anything, to lose the place, to leave it in the dust. She wants it to burn, or to get tossed in the lake – like that train her dad was on so long ago – so that its ruins can become waterlogged and overgrown with algae and weeds.

She wants to leave.

She wants her mom’s house to look like the old Singer homestead she found across the lake: she wants the house to look broken down and heartless. She wants it to look like no one ever lived there, like no one ever could.

Maybe that’s why she goes back so often – she always goes back and forth: to the little homestead, which is like a dream that she desperately wants to see come true; then to the house, as if maybe this time, this time, it might have finally decided to give in. Maybe this time it would finally have drowned beneath the vegetal; maybe it would have finally crumbled down around its foundation, the roof suddenly too much for the walls and supports to hold up any longer.

She is heartbroken and heartbreaking, this child trapped inside a woman’s body. She is a flighty thing, like a bird, maybe, and for as much as she wants to fly away there is always something tethering her to the ground. There is always someone dragging her back to the home she so desperately wants to leave.

She’s not meant to be in one place – the people on the trains… they are her people, and she is theirs.

She wants to die. She is like the houseplant in the corner: everyone who is anyone knows that it would grow better outside. It would thrive there. But instead it is trapped indoors, wanting for fresh air and sunlight and water, and over time it suffocates and wilts; its leaves turn brown and die, and she can feel herself dying with it, slow and unstoppable and inevitable.

She’s never been the type of person who realizes what they’ve got until it’s too late. She’s never the girl who understands just how deeply attached to things she’s grown until it doesn’t matter anymore.

She’s never been able to tell that it _is_ too late.

Maybe it’s because she’s used to hating everything that she considers an entanglement, or loving the rush and joy of the escape.


End file.
